Observations about Art, Movies, Books, etc.

Early Arrivals – The Bane of My Existence

With economic times being as bad as they are, I feel lucky to be working for a company that is actually doing some hiring.

This means, however that I have more visitors to handle while working on my projects. This wouldn’t be bad except recently we’ve had some over-anxious applicants who’ve arrived waaaaayyyyy early. Arriving ten minutes prior to a scheduled interview is okay (and acceptable according to all the Yahoo! articles I’ve read) but thirty to forty minutes early is just crazy.

Unfortunately when such an early bird shows up at my company, I’m stuck with them until the appointed interview time. It is difficult not to be annoyed at having a silent watcher observing my movements as I work, especially when I have a detailed project to finish.

It’s part of the territory with my particular job, so I do try not to let my annoyance show when I have a lingering guest cooling his heels in my lobby. I realize I am not the only person who gets stuck in these awkward situations. Just recently we had a client meeting and I picked up some doughnut holes on the way into the office as a courtesy to our guests. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the meeting room an hour before they were due and there they were with one of our VPs chatting them up!

Before I could hide my confusion, I blurted out “Am I late?” “Oh no. We’re just here seizing the day.” my clever VP replied as he turned back to our guests. As it turned out, they had misread their invitations as saying 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. Our lucky VP got to tap dance for a good 45 minutes before one of the other meeting leaders arrived.

I didn’t feel so bad about my situation after that and promised myself to remember to handle my early birds with as much grace as my boss had.